In Elon Musk’s vision of human history, Donald Trump is the singularity. If Musk can propel Trump back to the White House, it will mark the moment that his own superintelligence merges with the most powerful apparatus on the planet, the American government—not to mention the business opportunity of the century.
Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the one poised to live out the ultimate techno-authoritarian fantasy.
The killing on Thursday of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the principal architect of the October 7 attack on southern Israel, offers a golden opportunity for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare victory and begin pulling troops out of Gaza. But that is not going to happen. Most likely, nothing will change, because neither Netanyahu nor Hamas wants it to.
Netanyahu’s calculation is no mystery.
China’s economy is sputtering. The solution? Convince women to have babies.
Uber and Lyft want to pit struggling workers against customers with disabilities. But the corporations are the problem.
The FTC is finally doing something about hard-to-cancel subscriptions.
You might never get on its planes—but it’s already done more for you than you know.
In the age of climate change, is owning your home a bigger liability than an asset?
Arizona is one of several states where right-leaning groups are backing conservative judges as they prepare to challenge newly passed ballot measures protecting abortion.
Missteps by the World Health Organization, a vaccine manufacturer and an African country led to another health emergency, experts say.
Trump says he’ll veto legislation to ban the procedure.
The ruling allows abortions to resume beyond six weeks into pregnancy.
Still angry about the Covid response, GOP lawmakers want to overhaul the National Institutes of Health if they win in November.
The Democratic nominee isn’t campaigning much on the Biden administration’s bigger, slower-moving policies.
The Treasury secretary is defending her legacy — and warning that the stability of the U.S. economy is at stake.
It was her first solo interview with a national network as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Interest rate cut “is not a declaration of victory, it’s a declaration of progress.
The move signals that the central bank is growing nervous about the declining labor market.
We look at Israel’s threats to launch retaliatory strikes against Iran as fears grow of a broader regional war. We speak to analyst Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, about the Biden administration sending U.S. troops and the top-of-the-line THAAD missile defense system to Israel. “There are no direct and clear U.S. interests at stake here,” says Parsi.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
You know the expression and what it means, but I will use only the abbreviation: WTF. In military circles, it is rendered as “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.” On the show The Good Place, it is “What the fork.
In what turned out to be the last few months of Yahya Sinwar’s life, U.S. and Israeli officials worried that the architect of the October 7 attacks might never free the hostages they believed he had hidden in the twisting tunnels of Gaza. Sinwar had essentially abandoned negotiations over a durable cease-fire and the accompanying release of the 100-plus captives, as well as fresh aid for Palestinians and the chance to rebuild their obliterated territory with international help.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Even for Silicon Valley, where executives have spent the past two years likening their chatbots to fire, electricity, and nuclear weapons, the past few months have been extraordinary.
Muah.AI is a website where people can make AI girlfriends—chatbots that will talk via text or voice and send images of themselves by request. Nearly 2 million users have registered for the service, which describes its technology as “uncensored.” And, judging by data purportedly lifted from the site, people may be using its tools in their attempts to create child-sexual-abuse material, or CSAM.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.
Plagiarism is constantly in the news. In politics alone, the charge has been leveled at Melania Trump, former Harvard President Claudine Gay, President Joe Biden (long ago), and Vice President Kamala Harris (just this week). In literature and journalism, the accusation is even more commonly thrown around, generating decades-long controversies, resignations, and lawsuits.
Tributes have poured in from across the globe for 19-year-old Sha’ban al-Dalou, a software engineering student who burned to death after Israel bombed Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah on Monday. Photographs and footage of his final moments shocked millions around the world as Sha’ban laid in a hospital bed with an IV attached to his arm as the flames engulfed him.
Israel announced Thursday it had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, releasing a video allegedly showing Sinwar’s final moments before his death after Israeli forces in Rafah attacked the building he was in. After the announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared “this is not the end of the war in Gaza.” In Tel Aviv, Israeli families called for Netanyahu to refocus efforts on negotiating a deal to free the hostages.
Hamas has confirmed Israel killed the organization’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, marking what could be a turning point in its yearlong war. Sinwar was apparently not killed as part of a targeted strike, but in the course of Israel’s indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip. “It’s not a war that’s happening against Hamas … This is an Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people,” says Palestinian analyst Tareq Baconi, author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance.
Uber and Lyft want to pit struggling workers against customers with disabilities. But the corporations are the problem.
The FTC is finally doing something about hard-to-cancel subscriptions.
